                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2024 January 29
   The famous Pleiades star cluster is shown surrounded by dust. Dust near
     the bright stars reflects blue light, but dust further away appears
     more red. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

                      The Pleiades: Seven Dusty Sisters
                   Image Credit & Copyright: Craig Stocks

   Explanation: The well-known Pleiades star cluster is slowly destroying
   part of a passing cloud of gas and dust. The Pleiades is the brightest
   open cluster of stars on Earth's sky and can be seen from almost any
   northerly location with the unaided eye. Over the past 100,000 years, a
   field of gas and dust is moving by chance right through the Pleiades
   star cluster and is causing a strong reaction between the stars and
   dust. The passing cloud might be part of the Radcliffe wave, a newly
   discovered structure of gas and dust connecting several regions of star
   formation in the nearby part of our Milky Way galaxy. Pressure from the
   stars' light significantly repels the dust in the surrounding blue
   reflection nebula, with smaller dust particles being repelled more
   strongly. A short-term result is that parts of the dust cloud have
   become filamentary and stratified. The featured deep image incorporates
   nearly 9 hours of exposure and was captured from Utah Desert Remote
   Observatory in Utah, USA, last year.

                      Tomorrow's picture: to the hyades
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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